The Love of a Lawman, The Callister Trilogy, Book 3 (7 page)

"Miller Logging."

"But I thought they convicted Kenny Miller of murder." The only murder that had occurred in Callister County in over half a century had been committed by the most successful citizen in the county, who also employed her brother.

"His two sisters is running his company. Good thing, 'cause there ain't nobody else in this county to work for."

"I wish you could get a job that lasts year-round." She poured coffee for herself and sat down opposite him at the table. "You've been off, what, four months?"

He sprawled in his chair. One leg thrust forward, his foot shod with a well-worn lace-up work boot, the footwear worn by loggers and tree-fallers. "Since Thanksgiving."

Isabelle shook her head, frustrated at the lack of opportunity in a town of six hundred thirty-five people. Another fact to remind her that returning to Callister was supreme folly. "See? That's exactly what I mean."

She watched as he sipped coffee, noted his dirty black work pants, his faded and stretched waffle-knit shirt. Her brother needed some care. If she could make a difference in his life, perhaps that alone would turn out to be a good enough reason for coming back. "I'm going to Boise in a few days and buy a new washer and dryer. Then you can bring your laundry out here and I'll do it for you."

"You don't need to be washing my clothes. It ain't no big deal. When everything gets dirty, I throw it all in a trash sack and take it to that coin-op joint downtown and—"

"Paul, I want to do your laundry. Just bring it out here."

He shrugged.

"While I'm down in Boise, I'm going to try to see Sherry. When summer gets here, maybe she'll bring your girls up to spend some time with us. Ava doesn't know any of our family."

He didn't look at her, but studied the contents of his mug. He hadn't said how the breakup of his family had affected him, but Isabelle knew losing his wife and two daughters would be a never-healing wound. "You're really hung up on this family crap, ain'tcha?" he said.

"You and your kids are part of the reason I came back here. That's why I want you to straighten up. I want you to be a brother I can be proud of and the father your kids can be proud of. It'd kill me to see you end up like Pa."

Paul huddled over his coffee mug. "On my worst days, sis, I couldn't be as bad as that old sumbitch, but I don't think anybody's gonna be proud of me anytime soon."

That could be true, Isabelle thought, but she said, "
I
will, if you let me." She rose, put her cheek against his and hugged him. Then, before they had time to break into tears, she returned to the stove.

She lifted the crispy bacon strips from the hot grease onto a plate and broke three eggs into the skillet. They sizzled and spit as the edges of the whites crisped and curled.
Damn. Lacy eggs.
She turned down the heat and reached for the bread. "Will two toasts be enough?"

"Yeah. Listen, I heard in town Art shot your dog."

A mix of sadness and anger still burned inside her over how the border collie had died. Isabelle dropped the bread slices into the toaster. "Jack was chasing his sheep."

"Humph. Art 'Dimos and our old man. Now there's a pair. Somebody shoulda killed 'em both a long time ago. I can prob'ly find you another dog. What kind you want?"

Isabelle carefully turned the eggs, proud of herself for not breaking the yolks. "I don't know if Ava's ready for another pet. We'll just let it go for a while, until she says she wants one. I've got my hands full with other things right now."

When the toast popped up, she removed it and began to spread butter on it. "Paul, how long has John Bradshaw been sheriff?"

She hadn't been able to put the altogether too appealing sheriff out of her mind. To her continued dismay, the image of his tight Wranglers hugging his muscled haunches as he stalked across her yard kept coming back at unexpected moments.

"I dunno. Since before Christmas, I guess. Why?"

"He came out about Jack. I was surprised to see him back in Callister. Remember when he was in high school? He was a good enough roper to be on the Wrangler team. If someone had asked me what happened to him, I would've said he became a rodeo star."

"He tried, but he ain't no different from the rest of us Callisterites, sis. Born losers, ever' last one of us."

"Don't say that. I don't consider myself a loser. And you aren't one either unless you make it so."

"The busybodies say ol' John spent too much time on the road. Neglected his homework."

Her brother sniggered, as she had heard other men do when they talked about sex. Having worked all of her adulthood around more men than women, she had no trouble recognizing it as the male equivalent of a giggle. Isabelle rolled her eyes. "You men are all alike."

"Well?" Paul returned a wide-eyed look as if he were innocent. "What else would you call it? While John was off chasing rodeos, his wife fell into some college professor's bed down in Boise, then took off with him to California. If ol' John had been spending his nights at home, that prob'ly wouldn't of happened. It must've got to him pretty bad 'cause afterwards was when he took up whiskey."

Isabelle lifted the eggs from the skillet and slid them onto the plate with the bacon and toast. "That's too bad, but that's how it is with a lot of rodeoers who try to be married and have families. It's a hard life filled with temptations."

She set the steaming breakfast in front of her brother, then returned to her chair at the table and her coffee. "He's divorced now?"

Why she asked, she didn't know.

Paul dug into the food like he hadn't eaten in a month. "That's what they say. She cleaned him out. They had some kids. She took them, too."

"I don't understand how he got to be sheriff if he drinks too much."

"He don't drink no more. Nobody else would take the job, Izzy. It went empty for weeks after they arrested Jim Higgins. You remember Luke McRae? He's a county commissioner now. He ran into John down in Boise and hired him to do it."

She scarcely remembered Luke, with him a senior and her a sophomore. The hard-up Rondeaus and the well-off McRaes had nothing in common. "How nice to be rich enough to just pick out the man you want to be the sheriff."

"Things ain't changed much around here, Izzy. Same ol' people running things and scratching each other's backs—the McRaes, the Flaggs, the Fielders... the Bradshaws. Nobody was even surprised when all of a sudden a Bradshaw got to be the sheriff."

"Well, fortunately there isn't much crime here."
Unless you count murdered dogs.
"So when can you start work on the barn?"

"No time like now, I guess. Soon's I eat." He popped a bacon slice into his mouth and chewed, then washed it down with coffee. He gave her a mischievous grin. "I 'spect you ain't gonna pay me, but I hope to hell you're gonna keep feeding me. You're almost as good a cook as Ma was."

Chapter 5

Barking dogs in the sheriff's office?

As John reached the bottom of the stairs in the sheriff's reception room, he saw Rooster and Dana huddled over a big cardboard box, playing with two blond puppies. So his ears hadn't deceived him. "Where'd they come from?"

"I found them this morning," Dana answered. "Someone left them in this box by the door last night. Bless their hearts." She picked one up and cuddled it at her breast. It wriggled free and climbed over her shoulder, letting out a whine. "Aren't they just the cutest things?"

"You taking them home?"

"Cliff'll skin me if I bring home one more animal."

John knelt on one knee, put his hand into the box and let the remaining pup lick his fingers. "You taking them to your house, Rooster?"

"Lord, no. I got two dogs already. Looks like they belong to you, John T."

"Me? I live in an apartment, remember?"

"If you want a doghouse, I've got one o' them fiberglass things you can have."

"Where'll I put it, in the living room? They male or female?" He picked the pup in the box up and peered at its belly.

"One of each, I think," Dana said.

"So what'll we do with them?"

"Maybe somebody'll come in today who'll want them," Rooster said.

"Maybe you could use your charm, John, and sweet-talk Morticia into taking them." Dana guffawed.

The receptionist was joking about Rita Mitchell, the exotic-looking brunette from Boise who had opened a coffee shop in town. She delivered free lattes to the sheriff's office and made it so obvious that more than free coffee was available that Dana and Rooster teased him at every opportunity.

Ignoring the receptionist's jab, John said to Rooster, "Since we don't have an animal control department, I suppose the sheriff gets stuck with that job, too, huh?"

Rooster laughed. "That's about the size of it."

John put both puppies back into the box and carried them to one of the two empty jail cells. Rooster and Dana followed and spread newspaper on the cell's concrete floor. Then Dana left for the grocery store to buy dog food and chew toys.

By six o'clock they'd had no more success at finding the puppies a home than they'd had at keeping them jailed. With their small bodies, they slipped right through the bars and kept John, Rooster and Dana busy putting them back.

The dozen people who had come and gone in the sheriff's office had viewed the cell's occupants, but no one volunteered to adopt them. John had gone back to the cell to pet them and play with them several times and grown more attached with each passing hour, but he couldn't figure out how he could keep them. Dana ducked out for home before six, leaving the puppies' future to him and Rooster.

"What do you want me to do with 'em when I lock up tonight?" Rooster asked. "We can't leave 'em here overnight."

John's shift had ended, but Rooster would be keeping the office open until nine. "I'm not sure," he said. "My backyard's barely big enough for my porch." The minute the words left his mouth, Ava Bledsoe's unhappy little face popped into his mind. "Wait a minute. I know just what to do with these guys."

An hour later he was standing on Izzy's front porch, the box of puppies under one arm. Hanging on the other was the plastic grocery sack of chew toys and the bag of Puppy Chow that Dana had bought. On the porch floor at his feet sat a gray igloo-shaped doghouse he had picked up at Rooster's place. He had even extorted a promise from the vet for free shots.

He knocked. Ava came to the door and stared up at him. She was dressed in jeans, two sweaters and pink-and-white athletic shoes. She had a book in her hand.

"Your mom home?"

"She's over at the barn." She pushed her glasses up on her nose with her forefinger.

A puppy yelped and his head popped up, past the rim of the box. "Okay," John said. "I'll go over there."

He turned to leave, but before he reached the edge of the porch, the kid was in front of him, shoving her thin arms into a coat. "I'll show you," she said and headed for the barn. Her eyes kept veering to the squirming bodies inside the box. "What are you doing with those puppies?"

"Nothing much. I just came to show them to your mom."

"Mama doesn't want any hounds. She only likes a few kinds of dogs."

"What kind is that?"

"She likes border collies and shelties. Sometimes she likes Jack Russells, but she says they're useless."

"I see," John said, mentally agreeing with that opinion.

Approaching the barn, John saw new pine poles here and there in the corral fences. He didn't recall seeing them a few days ago when he had come out to investigate the dog shooting. Somebody was making improvements.

Ava and he ducked between the poles of the corral adjoining the big barn and she led him inside. He inhaled a deep breath. Being the son of a cattle rancher, he loved the smell of a barn. The mixed scents of hay, leather and animals were branded on his soul and he missed them. The apartment where he spent his free time smelled like an oil furnace.

He saw Izzy at the far end of the barn mucking out a stall, shoveling soiled hay and shavings and animal droppings into a wheelbarrow. When they reached her, both puppies were straining to crawl out of the box and John set it on the ground.